SANTA
MONICA— On Wednesday, March 13, Santa Monica was named winner in the first ever
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayor Challenge. As one of the four runner-ups in the
nationwide competition, the city will receive the award as seed money to
develop its “Wellbeing Project."

Santa Monica Pier.

The
idea of the project is to measure civic life by creating a well-being index. If
begins to work it would be able to measure how connected residents feel to
their communities and how the city would be able to bounce back after a natural
disaster or another catastrophic event. Santa Monica officials have been
working on their proposal for months.

More than 300 cities submitted to
Bloomberg Philanthropies, led by New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. In the
fall, Santa Monica was named amongst the 20 finalists.

On Wednesday, Providence,
Rhode Island was named as the grand prizewinner of five million dollars for
their program. Santa Monica and three other runner-ups Houston, Chicago and
Philadelphia received one million dollars to kick-start their programs.

Santa
Monica’s project will be carried out over the next two years, and the
developers hope to develop model to be used nationwide. The City will need to
gather data factors for the index such as economics, education and health.
Santa Monica Mayor Pam O’ Connor called the idea game changer.